A physician may prescribe that his patient take one or more compressed tablets of medication so many times a day and quite commonly may prescribe that each dosage consist of one-half tablet as the patient's correct dose each time. Some tablets are scored in order to permit them to be divided evenly and others are not. However, frequently even tablets which have been scored are difficult, if not impossible to break evenly by use of the fingers alone and often those which are not scored are nearly impossible to divide evenly even if one uses a knife, cutting board or other shearing device.
A number of tablet splitting devices have been proposed to solve this problem. Such devices incorporate a tablet splitting wedge or knife edge and some means for holding the tablet so that when the knife edge is brought compressively against either the surfaces of a tablet or its outer edge, even splitting is supposed to occur. Devices of this type may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,517,871, 4,173,826 and 4,179,806. However, these devices do not provide a complete solution to the problem for the reason that their cutting forces applied to the tablet are harsh, un-damped and concentrated only upon an isolated, single point of the tablet. For example, regardless of how a tablet may be held, the application of an un-damped splitting force applied from either one or both sides of a tablet induces a shock-like effect within the tablet granulation and causes the tablet to break apart unevenly or for that matter cannot assure that the tablet may not disintegrate into several dissimilar smaller parts. Since tablets are invariably provided with convex curved upper and lower surfaces, the knife edge (unless it is shaped to match such curvature) will apply a single point pressure at some point upon the curved surface of the tablet. This is totally unsatisfactory and will produce fractures which are not aligned with the cutting edge of the knife. The foregoing effect is exacerbated by the fact that the granulation of solid dry material comprising tablets are held together by only moderate cohesive action and invariably disintegrate when subjected to the un-damped compressive force exerted by the knife edge whether or not this force is applied either to one or both surfaces of the tablet, or to the tablet's outer edges.
The present invention has uniquely provided a solution to the foregoing problems as will be seen with reference to the specification and drawing which follows: